Comment by wongarsu
7 years ago
Incrementing counters for pageviews, visited page, referer and page width, and putting that into chartjs is something I can put together myself in two hours. It wouldn't be nearly as polished, but it would be 90% there and good enough. Plus I would have a much better idea how well it scales, and generally have less unknowns and risks.
The goal is great, the design is sleek, but at the current price point (which is already lowered to $9) and feature set, it's just not worth it to me. For that price the tool has to provide more actionable data or other value.
There's probably a market out there, but most of that market is probably not the type of person you will find on hacker news.
There's always one.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
Dropbox is a glorified FTP client, Slack is IRC with a nice skin and inline pictures, Spotify is bittorrent without the hassle of downloads (and more legal, but that hasn't stopped people). Convinience matters, and convinience sells. But it is only one of many factors that play into the decision to purchase. Dropbox for example wouldn't sell all that great without the free tier.
If you honestly think that Dropbox is just glorified FTP, or Slack is just IRC with pictures, or Spotify is JUST bittorrent (or Napster even), I question if you've ever actually used any of those services. They provide so much more than the alternatives you listed.
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I made an argument about this offering vs other offerings, not this offering vs rolling your own, which is a whole different issue.
It's incredible how many developers undervalue their own time, effort, and liability. I believe you're mistaken if you think this'll only take two hours of your time. Even if that's true, I believe you're mistaken that your two hours of time is cheaper than $9/mo. I'm also certain that being responsible for analytics sets you up for liabilities and maintenance that distracts from your main value proposition.
There's definitely a market for this, and that market is absolutely here, but apparently a lot of developers don't know how to pick and choose their battles.
> I made an argument about this offering vs other offerings
No you didn't. You argued what it shouldn't be compared to, so I compared it to something else.
> I'm also certain that being responsible for analytics sets you up for liabilities
Outsourcing analytics opens me to the same or worse legal liabilities.
> Even if that's true, I believe you're mistaken that your two hours of time is cheaper than $9/mo.
I don't live in Silicon Valley, so $9/mo pays for two hours within a few months. Sure, there's hosting and an uncertain maintenance burden, but on the other hand buying a service has its own uncertain overheads.
What happens if the service is down, what if it fails to scale, what if it gets hacked? What if it just disappears because there weren't enough customers? Most of these are much easier to answer and take up less time with a self-built service.
You can choose to delegate the uncertain overheads to a company that relies (and specializes) on dealing with them. Or you can roll it yourself and add to your burden.
Code is not an asset, it's a liability. And I mean that from a pure responsibility standpoint, not just from a legal responsibility standpoint.
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